The transport practice group of Denuo joined RUMLA in the summer of 2025. Partner Anna Otkina and Counsel Anna Antonova are now among the members. In an exclusive interview, they shared the story of how they came into the field of maritime law. They also discussed the potential benefits that Lex Maritima could bring to the sector and pointed out a number of problematic challenges from the fraudulent registration of vessels to ensuring the principle of freedom of navigation is upheld.

At the heart of any institution’s history lie the people whose commitment and determination gave it life and carried it forward. The 95-year history of the Maritime Arbitration Commission (MAC), Russia’s oldest specialised arbitration, is not just a timeline of procedural rules and decisions, but a complex and often dramatic chronicle of human destinies.

In our previous article, we explored the origins of the Russian Maritime Law Society, the goals it pursued, and how effectively it fulfilled them. This article continues that research, now through the lens of personal stories. Presented here are the biographies of members of the Society and Russian honorary members of the Comité Maritime International (CMI), whose identities we have been able to establish. Their lives have been reconstructed piece by piece from archival documents, family recollections, and rare online sources.

The article examines the institution of general average, focusing on the development of the concept and its key characteristics. The author explores the historical stages of the institution’s formation and the modern approach to its application.

This article offers a detailed historical overview of the Russian Maritime Law Society, drawing upon previously unpublished archival materials. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the historical and social background in which the foundations were laid for the establishment of the first association of its kind within the Russian Empire. The article examines rules of maritime law of that period and cites correspondence between the Comité Maritime International (hereinafter referred to as CMI or the Committee) and Russian ministers, in which the supranational organization makes a compelling case for the rationale behind the formation of a national Maritime Law Society. The publication also briefly outlines the history of the Society, revealing the procedures by which new members joined, how meetings were held, and how the members prepared for the Comité Maritime International conferences. Furthermore, for the very first time, we are unveiling a complete list of Society members as of 1913.

Interview with senior lecturer of the National Research University «Higher School of Economics», Saint-Petersburg Konstantin Putrya

This article is essentially a historical review of the Russian Maritime Law Society. The text is divided into four parts. The first part deals with the foundation of the Society and the role of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich Romanov, who approved the Charter of the Society. The second part describes the purpose of the Society, namely, to unite the efforts of lawyers to study, develop and unify maritime law; this part also describes the international analogue of the Society, the Comite Maritime International. The Russian Society was its member. The third part describes the activities of the Comite Maritime International in developing international conventions in the field of maritime law. The lack of information regarding the Russian Society of Maritime Law in the Russian archives is made up for through the archives of Comite Maritime International, namely, the minutes of the negotiations of the conventions drafts. The fourth part deals with the personalities and their activities in the Society.

The article is devoted to the history of the institution of the judicial letters (Richterbriefe), the implementation of which was one of the measures of the German Reform of 1942 of justice institutions and judicial system. According to the idea of its creators, this institution was supposed to form a «correct» view of judicial manpower concerning the judicial practice, corresponding to the needs of society and of the state, by means of the selective publications of extracts from judgements on specific cases. The Imperial Ministry of Justice was assigned to make the systematisation of the judicial practice for its «streamlining» and «direction». Law reviews and generalisations were published in a specially created press organ with a Ministry’s assessment of the correctness of the judgements. The task of the judicial letters was not to create direct, meaningful directives on the judgements to be made in specific cases, but indirectly to formulate principles for evaluating positive law through the prism of society’s needs in certain adjudication. The article describes the conditions for the establishment of the institution of judicial letters in Nazi Germany, defines also the causes and the motives of the reform of justice announced in 1942, its goals and objectives, as well as its measures to overcome the «crisis of justice». Concerning the institution of judicial letters, the article represents the provided by the reform process of the collection and systematisation of judicial practice, the selection criteria for publication of court decisions, analyses the methodological impact of judicial letters on the law enforcement process, describes the introduction of this institute into practice, including the distribution of judicial letters, and related complications relating to this history. Such a way of influencing the process of administration of justice was not accepted by the German judiciary. It was manifested in the large-scale evasion of judges from fulfiling the obligation to send copies of judgements to the Ministry for systematisation of judicial practice, strengthening with the end of the war approaching. More experienced and old judges interpreted the judicial letters as an instrument for intrusion into their exclusive competence area, which

Commentary to case No. A70-14648/2021 (FSUE “Atomflot” v. Zapsibgazprom-Gasification Ltd.)